Charges dropped against Moscow pride organizer
Police dropped all charges against chief Moscow gay pride organizer Nikolai Alekseev on April 11.
Alekseev was arrested last May 27 during the disastrous attempt to stage the city's first public gay-pride events. He was charged with a 'breach of order in the organization or conduct of a gathering, meeting, demonstration, march or picket' when he and other activists tried to lay flowers at the Kremlin's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
'Police could not find any evidence that I breached Russian legislation [ so ] they had nothing else to do than to close all proceedings against me without official accusations or administrative sanctions,' Alekseev said.
After Mayor Yuri Luzhkov and a court banned last year's planned first pride parade, activists tried to deliver the flowers and to hold a rally across from City Hall. They were violently attacked at both sites by neofascists, skinheads, Christians and riot police.
Luzhkov has banned this year's planned parade as well, saying: ' [ T ] hrough the gay parade you promote some uncertain people and it becomes an invitation to acquire this quality of the sexual minorities. [ It is saying that ] this is OK, that's normal, this is useful. Our view is that it is wrong and unusual.
'Last year, Moscow came under unprecedented pressure to sanction the gay parade, which can be described in no other way than as satanic. We did not let the parade take place then, and we are not going to allow it in the future. ... Some European nations bless single-sex marriages and introduce sexual guides in schools. Such things are a deadly moral poison for children.'
On April 6, Luzhkov's press secretary, Sergei Tsoi, said activists planning this year's march on May 27 are 'aggressive' and 'play with fire.'
The gay community's 'most aggressive members try to impose their convictions on millions of Moscow citizens who deny their lifestyle,' he told the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets. 'If they disregard [ the ban ] , they will assume overall responsibility for all possible consequences -- and it is dreadful to predict what they may be.'
Pride organizers have a suit pending in the European Court of Human Rights seeking a determination of their right to march and $26,000 in damages related to last year's fiasco.
Court: Aruba must recognize Dutch same-sex marriages
The Caribbean island of Aruba, which is part of the Netherlands, must recognize Dutch same-sex marriages, the Netherlands' Supreme Court ruled April 13.
The decision came in the case of a Dutch woman and an Aruban woman, Esther and Charlene Oduber-Lamers, who married in the Netherlands in 2001, settled in Aruba, and were told by local authorities that their marriage was not legal.
The Common Court of Justice of the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba previously ruled in the couple's favor but the island's government appealed, with Prime Minister Nelson Oduber calling it a moral issue.
Aruba has a population of 71,566.
—Assistance: Bill Kelley